pet connection

Why is it that when cats blog, they spell all the words funny? See, to my mind, that’s a carefree style only a dog would use. A cat is more detail-oriented, and would surely be persnickety about spelling, grammar and punctuation. You only have to watch a cat groom himself — starting with licking the lips, licking the paws, washing the face and ending with careful tongue-swipes along the entire length of the tail — to know that a cat is not about to use a comma when a semi-colon is required.

Over on Whatever, John “Bacon on the Cat” Scalzi’s cat Ghlaghgheee is busy proof-reading the Hebrew translation of John’s book, “Old Man’s War.” This cat is so smart, and yet John maintains the animal spells like this:

IM IN UR LIBURY REEDIN UR BOOKZ

I don’t buy it. I think John’s cat doesn’t really blog at all.

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The dogs left the Orvis dog catalog on my reading table the other day. I think they were lobbying for new beds. Why? I have no idea, since they sleep every night on an expensive king-sized Tempur-Pedic, which they insisted I get and generously share with me.

But still, the Orvis beds (and others, such as the ones from Drs. Foster and Smith) are lovely, and they sure look comfortable. Some of them are also incredibly expensive, with the kind of price tags that trigger “tut-tutting” from the pinheads who live to send me hate mail about “pet freaks” who spend so much money on their animal companions. (Note to hate-mailers: I skim, no response, and send you to spam-folder hell forever. So don’t waste your time.)

If you’re looking for something superbly comfortable for your dog without taking out a second mortgage, check out this tip from Bankrate.com:

Elena del Rio Parra of Atlanta, won $100 for submitting the following tip:

Deluxe therapeutic pet bed for $20
I wanted to replace my dog’s eight-year-old bed. I bought $20 worth of shredded Memory Foam and replaced the filling. Now she has a new therapeutic bed suited for an older dog, and I had enough foam left to make a second bed and extra pillows. My dog thinks this tip is a winner, and her joints and little bones agree!

What a great idea! Take shredded pieces of ridiculously overpriced (but wonderfully comfortable) beds like mine and re-stuff your pet bed. For less than one-tenth (or even one-20th) the cost of the catalog beds! Here’s the whole explanation of where to find the foam and how to make the bed.

If you have money-saving pet-care tips, drop the PetConnection a line. If we use them in our syndicated pet-care feature, we’ll give you credit and send you a signed copy of one of our new books. They have to be suggestions that are good for pets and pocketbook, because we’re not about saving money by shortchanging our animals.

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Good stuff from elsewhere:

On the Tales and Tails of New York blog, the question is asked: Are no-kill shelters really possible, when the cages are full of animals few people want, like pit bulls, chows, Rottweilers (and all their mixes) and lots and lots of cats?

One woman told me her husband was a police officer who often (as part of the job) picks up stray dogs. Usually, the cops bring stray dogs to the AC&C, but the woman’s apparently, tender-hearted husband brought two of the dogs home.

The two dogs were confined to the couple’s yard, supposedly because one of the kids was allergic. The caller was concerned that the dogs couldn’t stay there because the weather would soon be getting cold.

I told the woman that I could not immediately take the dogs. But, I would be willing to help her if she could give me information on the animals, was willing to get the dogs medically checked out and could send us pictures.

She hung up on me before I could complete the sentence.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about calls like these is that the people are almost never willing to make an effort or try and work with you. They just want a place to immediately drop the animals off to.

But, they don’t want the animals “put to sleep.”

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t revolve around what any of us “want.”

It is what it is, and we have to deal with it.

I got a call just like this a few hours ago. A friend of a friend picked up a collarless stray, and wanted to know what to do with the animals. I said, “Keep him while you try to find the owner.” Of course, that wasn’t the answer the person wanted. Instead, they wanted a medal for pulling the dog off the street, and then for the Magic Pet Fairy to take responsibility from here on out. Don’t know what happened, since the conversation ended shortly after I made it clear I wasn’t the Magic Pet Fairy today.

And speaking of suggesting a route of responsibility, Christie gets all truthie over on Dogged:

While it’s certainly true that scientific research and drug development are tainted by non-scientific interests, and non-patentable remedies don’t get anywhere near as much research as patentable ones do, it’s equally true that if something really works, and it’s been around for a while, we’d know. We’d know how it works, we’d know what it does, and we’d have at least some suggestive evidence in support of it.

And it wouldn’t be sold via multi-level marketing.

I also want to point out that being holistic doesn’t mean being gullible. It just often looks that way.

Here’s the rest.

Finally, Dr. Patty over on Dolittler … well, drat, her blog’s down at the moment. I’ll have to point over there in the morning.

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Remember the brouhaha over Wisconsin’s proposal to make it legal to hunt feral cats? Apparently an avid bird-watcher in Texas already thinks it’s OK in that state. From a 1999 Internet posting by Jim Stevenson, dug up by the Houstonist blog:

“And I’m sorry if this offends, but I sighted in my .22 rifle and killed about two dozen cats in about the first year,” the passionate birdwatcher and professional birding guide wrote. “When we allow feral cats to roam free, we might as well be out there with BB guns plinking away at the songbirds ourselves.”

Here’s the rest.

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I have not yet driven a vehicle that brought out such strong love/hate feelings as the Toyota FJ Cruiser. This vehicle could have been such an incredibly perfect dogmobile, if Toyota had just done a few things differently. And oh, are those drawbacks aggravating.

First, the alarm system. Evidently Toyota believes we are all forgetful idiots. The FJ will not allow you to leave it unlocked. If you walk away without locking it, after a few seconds it will lock itself and set the alarm. At that point, any motion in the car will set off the alarm.

OK, so let’s take a dog-travel scenario. Say you’re planning to drive with two dogs (say, two retrievers named Woody and McKenzie) from Sacramento to Chino, a seven-hour drive down Interstate 5 (and then across the 210, to the 57, to the 60, to the 71, to I-15. Or something like that, again, this is purely hypothetical), to compete in, say, the hunt test of the Golden Retriever Club of Greater Los Angeles.

A normal person might have to stop a couple of times to use the restroom, or grab a bite to eat. The weather being cool and all, said person would want to roll down the windows just a little bit and lock the car, since (I imagine) Toyota frowns on having its test vehicles stolen, and a normal person frowns on the same happening to her dogs.

(more…)

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